![]() ![]() But that Taras Bulba was a part he was born to play. In his memoirs Tony Curtis says that Yul Brynner was a strangely aloof character with a sort of self imposed grandeur about him in his manner. It's the beginning of his downfall as a Cossack. While there Curtis falls in love with a Polish princess Christine Kauffman. Brynner sends them off to school in Poland to learn all the Poles know. In the meantime he fathers two sons, Tony Curtis and Perry Lopez, who both inherit their father's geopolitical views. He goes back to the steppes of the Ukraine and awaits a time for some real payback. Yul Brynner as one of the Cossack brigade commanders lops off the right hand of Guy Rolfe, the Polish prince in retribution, but that hardly satisfies. As rulers the Poles hire out the Cossack Ukranians who in today's terminology might be considered a paramilitary outfit to fight off the Ottoman Turks and then turn on them. Not sure why the script didn't include it. The Poles are Roman Catholic and the Ukranians are Russian Orthodox, it's a very big part of the reason for the resentments shown here yet we never see the religious beliefs portrayed for either group. What's strangely muted in this version though is the religious angle. It's an exciting portrait of 16th century Ukraine under the then powerful kingdom of Poland. Although the famous Nikolai Gogol novel, Taras Bulba, was filmed many times, this version starring Tony Curtis and Yul Brynner is the best known at least in the USA.
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